Gingrich’s Ties To Fannie, Freddie Go Even Deeper

Earlier today we reported that Newt Gingrich had recently been on Fox denouncing Democatic lawmakers for ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — despite himself having worked as a consultant for Freddie back in 2006, helping to fight off potential regulation.

But it turns out that the Newt-Freddie relationship goes even deeper.

A July 1999 story in the American Banker, a banking trade publication (via Nexis), reports that the former House Speaker had recently been hired by Freddie “to provide strategic counsel on a range of issues,” according to a company spokesman.

The same story adds that Gingrich’s former chief of staff, Arne Christenson, was hired that year by Fannie Mae as senior vice president for regulatory policy.

what you have today is that the rich in Wall Street and the powerful at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had so many politicians beholden to them that, in fact, nobody was going to check them. And so they got away with things that were absolute bologna, and it’s a tragedy.